In the last few years of her life Lucy Crane delivered lectures in London and the north on ‘Art and the Formation of Taste,’ which after her death were illustrated and published by Thomas and Walter Crane (1882), together with a short and appreciative notice of the authoress. She died on 31 March 1882, at the house of a friend at Bolton-le-Moors.
[Notice as above; information furnished by her brother, Mr. Walter Crane.]
CRANE, NICHOLAS (1522?–1588?), presbyterian, of Christ's College, Cambridge, was imprisoned in 1568 for performing service in the diocese of London out of the Geneva prayer-book, which he called ‘the most sincere order,’ and for railing against the usages of the church. After a year's imprisonment he was released by the interposition of Bishop Grindal on making a promise to behave differently. As he did not keep this promise the bishop inhibited him. The Londoners of his party complained of this prohibition to the council, alleging that the bishop's conduct drove them ‘to worship in their houses.’ Grindal wrote to the council, pointing out that his action in the matter had been misrepresented. Crane's failure to keep his promise is said to have been the reason why Sandys, on succeeding Grindal in the see of London in 1570, called in all ‘the clerks' tolerations.’ He now appears to have taken up his residence at Roehampton, Surrey, and in 1572 joined in setting up a presbytery, ‘the first-born of all the presbyteries in England’ (Fuller, iv. 384), at the neighbouring village of Wandsworth. His nonconformity was grounded rather on disapproval of the vestments and usages prescribed by the church than on dissent from her doctrines. In 1577 he signed a letter from nine ministers to Cartwright, who was then abroad, declaring that the writers continued steadfast in their opposition to ceremonies, and in 1583 he subscribed the Latin epistle exhorting Cartwright to publish his confutation of the Rhemish translation of the New Testament in spite of the prohibition of the archbishop. His name is also attached to the petition sent by the imprisoned nonconformists to the lord treasurer. By June 1588 he had died in Newgate ‘of the infection of the prison’ at the age of 66. He married Elizabeth Carleton, and left children by her. His reasons for nonconformity are contained in ‘Parte of a Register,’ pp. 119–24 (Brook). In the summer and autumn of 1588 Udall, Penry, and the printer Waldegrave were at Mrs. Crane's house at East Molesey, Surrey, a case of type was brought thither from her house in London, and the ‘Demonstration of Discipline,’ and the first of the Martin Marprelate books, ‘The Epistle,’ were printed there.
[Strype's Grindal, pp. 226–31, Whitgift, p. 482, Annals, II. i. 40, iv. 130 (8vo edit.); Brook's Puritans, i. 362, ii. 246; Memoir of Cartwright, p. 220; Fuller's Church History, iv. 384 (ed. 1845); Arber's Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy, passim; Waddington's John Penry, pp. 24, 178, 225; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. ii. 39.]
CRANE, RALPH (fl. 1625), poet, was the author of a little volume of verse, now very rare, which was first published in 1621 under the title of ‘The Workes of Mercy, both Corporeall and Spirituall,’ with a dedication to John Egerton, earl of Bridgwater. The book was republished about 1625—no date is given on the title-page—with the new title, ‘The Pilgrimes New Yeares Gift, or Fourteene Steps to the Throne of Glory, by the 7 Corporeall and 7 Spirituall Acts of Charitie and those made Parallels,’ London (printed by M. F.) The author's ‘Induction’ in verse opens the book, and we learn there that Crane was born in London, the son of a well-to-do member of the Merchant Taylors' Company. He was brought up to the law; served Sir Anthony Ashley [q. v.] seven years as clerk; afterwards wrote for the lawyers; witnessed unhurt the ravages of the plagues in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and began writing poetry late in life when he was suffering much from poverty and sickness. Crane's verse is of a very pedestrian order, and his pious reflections are less readable than his autobiographic induction. A copy of the first edition is in the Bodleian and one of the second edition is in the British Museum. An extract is printed in Farr's ‘Select Poetry, temp. James I’ (Parker Soc.), 322–3. In 1589 Thomas Lodge dedicated ‘Scillaes Metamorphosis’ to one Ralph Crane, who is probably identical with the poet. Crane employed himself in his later years in copying out popular works and dedicating his transcripts to well-known persons in the hope of receiving pecuniary recompense. On 27 Nov. 1625 he sent to Sir Kenelm Digby, with a letter signed by himself, a transcript of Beaumont and Fletcher's ‘Humorous Lieutenant,’ which he entitled ‘Demetrius and Enanthe, by John Fletcher.’ The manuscript now belongs to W. W. E. Wynne, esq., of Peniarth, Merionethshire, and has been printed by the Rev. Alexander Dyce (1830). In MS. Harl. 3357 is another of Crane's transcripts, entitled ‘A Handfull of Celestiall Flowers.’ It is a collection of sacred poems by W. Davison, Thomas Randolph, and others, dedicated by
